'I Might as Well Give Up': Self-esteem and mature students' feelings about feedback on assignments

By P. Young. 2000

178 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Lecturers working with adult students balance the need to provide feedback and assess students' work with a concern to protect vulnerable students. This article is based on a small-scale quantitative research project that looked at Access students' responses to feedback on assignments. All students found the first assignment problematic, but thereafter great variations were found, which related to varying levels of self-esteem. Students varied in their attitudes to receiving feedback, their perceptions of the messages they were receiving and whether it was important to them that they receive positive comments. They also differed in the extent of the impact of the feedback, for some students, it was 'only work'; for others, their whole sense of self was at stake.

Subfields: Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cd6e52691e18e7d79856f49112482eba7a86b7f2

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Citations in the corpus

Feedback on assessment: students’ perceptions of quality and effectiveness (2008, background): “decrease in academic confidence, self-esteem) has similarly been identified in the context of higher education (Young 2000).”
Can we meet their expectations? Experiences and perceptions of feedback in first year undergraduate students (2013, background): “This finding suggests that it is important to consider the impact of the feedback on students, as students who are upset by comments have previously been found to gain less from the comments made (Kernis, Brocker, and Frankel 1989; Nicol and MacFarlane-Dick 2006; Young 2000) and negative comments co”
Academic and social integration in higher education: a survey of satisfaction and dissatisfaction within a first‐year education studies cohort at a new university (2004, background): “This is problematical and warrants institutional intervention as it is desirable that quality of feedback should be viewed as highly satisfactory, given that this facet has been implicated in raising student self-esteem (see Young, 2000).”
The role of feedback in cross-cultural learning: a case study of Chinese taught postgraduate students in a UK university (2013, background): “There is also recognition that feedback impacts on students’ emotions, motivation, self-esteem, self-identity and ‘whole sense of self’ (Young 2000; Juwah et al. 2004; Carless 2006; Nicol and Mcfarlane-Dick 2006; Orrell 2006; Pryor and Croussard 2008) and we turn to notions of ‘culture’, ‘cultural l”
Moving feedback forward: theory to practice (2013, background): “Tutors are also encouraged to consider their feedback practice to enhance transparency of criteria in written feedback (Carless 2006; Poulos and Mahony 2008) and in audio feedback (Lunt and Curran 2010) or to make standards explicit (Young 2000).”
Student preferences vis-à-vis teacher feedback in university EFL writing classes in Japan (2014, background): “Although Zhang (1995) found no gender differences regarding feedback preferences with university EFL writers (nearly all from East or Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands), wewere curious if gender differencesmight emerge for this particular sample.”
Context and identity: exploring adult learners' experiences of higher education (2008, result): “This and other specific incidents recorded in the data are reminiscent of the findings of Young’s experimental study which identified a strong correlation between low levels of self-esteem and the negative interpretation of tutor feedback (Young 2000).”
From feedback to revisions: Effects of feedback features and perceptions (2020, background): “In peer assessment, students should be reminded to provide positive feedback to soften negative comments via mitigation to establish a friendly and nonthreatening environment in which students are more likely to accept feedback (Young, 2000).”
Fast and effective feedback: are model answers the answer? (2007, background): “Previous work shows that student perception of individualized feedback will vary between individuals; students may not perceive critical comments as criticism (Weedon, 2000), and how they respond might depend on their self-esteem (Young, 2000).”
Do students value feedback? Student perceptions of tutors’ written responses (2006, background): “A qualitative study by Young (2000) suggests, however, that this should be considered from the opposite perspective: it is the student’s level of self-esteem that affects the messages they receive—both positive and negative.”
Exploring the Practice of Feedback to Students (2003, background): “The existing level of selfesteem, argues Young (2000), conditions how students will receive any comments, however carefully these are phrased by the tutor.”
Facilitating productive use of feedback in higher education (2013, background): “Furthermore, students (especially those with low levels of self-esteem) might react negatively to overtly negative comments (Ferguson, 2011; Pitts, 2005; Poulos and Mahony, 2008; Rice et al., 1994; Weaver, 2006; Young, 2000).”
Feedback on feedback practice: perceptions of students and academics (2017, background): “Staff may be less inclined to praise poor-quality work since research argues that feedback that is overly concerned with softening criticism may reduce its developmental value (Young 2000).”
Students’ perceptions of written feedback in teacher education: ideally feedback is a continuing two-way communication that encourages progress (2013, result): “These two major themes were apparent within the responses of almost every participant and confirmed earlier research findings that students have differing perceptions of written feedback (Carless 2006; Young 2000).”